1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of electronic commerce on the Internet, and in particular, to the generation and use of targeted commercial solicitations over the Internet.
2. Description of Related Art
A retailer interested in enticing customers to purchase products may have an advertisement created and published in a periodical, newspaper, appear on TV or radio, or mailed using a mailing list. For example, a grocer has weekly specials and places ads or flyers in the local newspaper to make potential and current customers aware of these specials. In this process, the grocer must engage the newspaper company and provide advertising input. The newspaper staff then creates the flyer, inserting it into a special advertising section.
An advertising approach utilizing a periodical as a delivery mechanism can only access a subset of the population defined as the subscribers of that periodical. Some understanding of subscriber demographics can be derived, but generally, an advertiser does not know if shoppers are responding to the ad or if items are purchased coincidentally. Newspaper advertising is poorly targeted and lacks the ability to verify shopper responses to advertisements.
On the Internet, the number of electronic commerce (e-commerce) sites is growing daily. At an e-commerce site, a shopper can access an electronic catalog (e-catalog) containing textual, graphical and multimedia based information about specific items. A shopper can select one or more item from an e-catalog, placing them into a virtual shopping cart. Shoppers can use search facilities provided by the e-commerce site to locate items. Once all desired items are located and selected, the shopper may proceed to a checkout process, specifying personal data (if the shopper has not previously registered) such as name, address, credit card numbers, and the like. Upon transaction completion the shopper is provided with delivery instructions or related details.
A significant problem affecting e-commerce site success is the inhibited ability to attract customers to their sites. One solution is to extend the e-commerce site catalog in the form of a solicitation sent to shoppers via electronic mail (e-mail).
E-mail can now be sent to shoppers on the Internet in the form of e-mail solicitations, but shoppers receiving such e-mail solicitations have no way to select items and submit an order without going to the e-commerce site and performing all of the usual steps which are necessary at the site to order the goods or services. The usual steps are sometimes referred to as the order mechanics. Presently, no automated method is known that enables a shopper to receive an electronic advertisement and shop from the advertisement.